Microsoft

As we enter the final stretch for the next big feature update of Windows 10, Microsoft is rolling out new builds for Insiders to test at a much faster rate.

The latest new flight, the second of the week, is Build 18358, and as you’d expect the focus now is on fixing bugs and improving the user experience.

Microsoft has doubled the number of people that can take part in Skype group video calls. For beta testers involved in the Skype Insider Preview, the upper limit increases from 25 to 50.

While this may not be something that the average home user will be particularly interested in, it's something that will be welcomed by business users as it means they will be able to hold larger remote meetings for free.

Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out Windows 10 Build 18356 for Insiders on the 19H1 branch and today it follows it up with a new 20H1 build for those testers in the Skip Ahead ring.

As a reminder, builds from the 20H1 branch are for the version of Windows 10 due out in a year’s time.

It’s Tuesday, which usually signals the arrival of a new Windows 10 build for Insiders, and right on cue here comes Build 18356 for the Fast ring.

With the next big feature update expected to begin its rollout next month, the focus here is naturally on fixing problems, but Android-owning Insiders can also look forward to using the You Phone app’s latest feature -- screen mirroring.

Microsoft first introduced its Your Phone app late last year, and Windows Insiders running a 19H1 build can now try out a brand new feature -- screen mirroring.

This new addition lets users mirror an Android phone’s screen directly on a Windows 10 PC, but -- as you might expect -- this feature isn’t available to all.

Anyone who is still using Windows 7 doesn't have much longer until the operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft. Come January 14, 2020 only those enterprise customers who are willing to pay for Extended Security Updates will receive any kind of support.

Microsoft has already done a lot to encourage Windows 7 diehards to make the move to Windows 10, and now it is stepping things up a gear. Throughout 2019, the company will show pop-up notifications in Windows 7 about making the switch to the latest version of Windows.

Updates to Windows are supposed to fix problems and improve security, but sometimes they do the opposite. Many Windows 10 users will have experienced startup problems after installing an update to the operating system, and this is something that Microsoft is looking to address.

Rather than leaving it down to users to seek out the problematic update and uninstall it, Windows 10 could start to automatically uninstall updates that have caused issues. If this happens to you, you'll be greeted by the message: "We removed some recently installed updates to recover your device from a startup failure."

While Windows 10 enjoys a significant and growing userbase, there are still many Windows 7 users out there. This includes a large number of enterprise users, and for these customers security is of paramount importance.

Last month we learned about the pricing for Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) which will be available when support for the aging operating system ends in 2020. Now we know that ESU will go on sale from the beginning of next month.

Windows Insider builds for the next big feature update of Windows 10 are coming thick and fast now, with the focus on fixing bugs and improving performance.

Today Windows 10 19H1 Build 18353 arrives on the Fast ring with quite a long list of fixes -- including many for Windows Sandbox -- and a dwindling amount of known issues.

The install base of Windows 10 has topped the 800 million mark according to the Microsoft Story Labs site. Microsoft executive Yusuf Mehdi tweeted the news yesterday.

This is an increase of 100 million since September last year and it seems likely that the increase has been partly driven by the impending end of support for Windows 7.

Most of the Skype-related news of late has been about Microsoft killing off Skype Classic and moving people to Skype 8 -- but now there's news about the web version of the communication tool. While there are a number of new features to explore -- including hi-def video calling, new notifications and call recording -- Microsoft has taken the decision to reduce the number of supported platforms.

The latest version of Skype for Web only works in Windows 10 and macOS 10.12 or newer, and only in the Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. Firefox and Opera users are left out in the cold, and anyone running Chrome OS or Linux will be disappointed to learn that their operating systems are no longer supported.

Microsoft has long been a champion of closed source ideology -- it made its billions thanks to it. Historically, the company was against open source, publicly bad-mouthing projects like Linux.

Under Satya Nadella's leadership, however, Microsoft is a very different company. Not only does it support open source and Linux, it actually contributes open source code. In fact, Microsoft is one of the top contributors. Today, the Windows-maker announces that it is taking its commitment to open source ideology even further. How? By making its Windows Calculator program an open source project on GitHub. Yes, really.

It's been a while since we heard much about Spectre, the speculative execution exploit that sent the security world into a frenzy. Cast your mind back a little while and you'll probably remember that the various fixes that were produced to mitigate against the exploits all had one thing in common -- they resulted in a performance hit.

To help address the reduced performance experienced on older AMD and Intel systems, a new mitigation technique called Retpoline was developed. This new Spectre patch is currently included in Insider builds of Windows 10, but you can install it and enable it right now -- regardless of whether you are signed up for the Insider program -- and enjoy a speed boost for your computer.

The Windows Insider program is a mess. It used to be as an Insider you got to test just early versions of the next big OS feature update, but now -- depending on which ring you’re in -- you might be testing versions for the first Windows 10 update of 2020, due out over a year from now.

As if that’s not bad enough, Fast ring Insiders are currently receiving new builds at a rate of two a week -- which hardly provides enough time to install and test them -- while Slow ring Insiders get only very occasional updates. It’s no wonder some of Microsoft’s loyal legion of unpaid testers are confused.

Not many Windows 10 users have upgraded to the October 2018 Update yet, but Microsoft is still hard at work on finishing the next big feature update, codenamed 19H1, which is due out next month.

New builds are coming out thick and fast, and today sees the release of Build 18351 to Fast ring Insiders.